Examining the structure of plant-lemur interactions in the face of imperfect knowledge.

Biotic interactions, such as plant-animal seed dispersal mutualisms, are essential for ecosystem function. Such interactions are threatened by the possible extinction of the animal partners. Using a data set that includes plant-lemur interactions across Madagascar, we studied the current state of knowledge of these interactions and their structure to determine which plant species are most at risk of losing dispersal services due to the loss of lemurs.

Comparisons of stable isotope composition among tissues of green turtles.

Unlabelled: Ecologists often need to make choices about what body parts (tissues or organs) of an animal to sample. The decision is typically guided by the need to treat animals as humanely as possible, as well as the information that different body parts can provide. When using stable isotopes, decisions are also influenced by whether specimens would require preservation, and whether they have properties (such as high lipid concentrations) that would influence measurements.

The Influence of Temperature on Embryonic Respiration, Growth, and Sex Determination in a Western Australian Population of Green Turtles (Chelonia mydas).

The thermal environment of sea turtle embryos has marked effects on many aspects of their development and energetics and has consequences for posthatching stages. Here we incubated Chelonia mydas embryos from Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia at a range of temperatures (27°, 29°, 30°, 31°, 32°, and 30° ± 5°C) to determine development rates and the pivotal temperature for sex determination. We also measured embryonic growth, oxygen consumption, and carbon dioxide production throughout development at 27° and 31°C.

Infants' scanning of dynamic faces during the first year.

This research investigated infants' scanning of a talking, socially engaging face. Three- to four-month-olds looked equally at the mouth and eyes whereas 9-month-olds attended more to the eyes than mouth. These findings shed light on information infants' seek from dynamic face stimuli.

Functional activation of the infant cortex during object processing.

A great deal is known about the functional organization of the neural structures that mediate visual object processing in the adult observer. These findings have contributed significantly to our conceptual models of object recognition and identification and provided unique insight into the nature of object representations extracted from visual input. In contrast, little is known about the neural basis of object processing in the infant.